In the early ’60s, four New York City high school students — Betty and Mary Weiss and Margie and Mary-Ann Ganser — started singing together, performing pop numbers at sock hops and talent shows. Their strong voices and good looks drew the attention of local promoters and producers and soon the girls were in the studio, making records. Not one of these singles, however, managed to crack the charts.
Then, in 1964, a 22-year-old, musically inclined ex-juvenile delinquent named George Morton spotted the four girls — a.k.a. the Shangri-Las — at a club in Queens. As he explained once in an interview for Goldmine magazine: “They did the first set so-so. Before the second set, I got them in the dressing room and said, ‘Look, you’re not gonna make it with just the singing, not with this crowd . . . You’ve gotta pull those garters off and throw them into the audience.’ And when they did it, people started standing and clapping.” That night, the Shangri-Las agreed to follow Morton into the recording studio. And a few days later, the new partnership’s first single — a tearjerker titled “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)” — was on wax.
Confident he had a hit, Morton headed over to the legendary Brill Building, where he played the track for Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, two of the era’s hottest songwriters. The recording’s lush sound, exaggerated sorrow and screeching seagull underscore so impressed the writers — as well as the bosses at the Red Bird recording label — that Morton and the Shangri-Las were offered a contract on the spot. And that summer, when the single was released, it rose to number five on the Billboard chart.
Morton continued to work with the singers off and on for two years, co-writing their songs, pitching the group to deejays and shaping their tough, leather-and-go go boots image. And with high-grade sessions players and high-tech equipment, he helped them land several hits, including perhaps the most famous girl-group tune ever recorded: “Leader of the Pack”. A collage of dialogue, doo-wop and sound effects, this song about forbidden love, motorcycles and violent death frightened parents around the world as much as it delighted teenagers. It also rose to number one.
But in 1965, Morton (now known as “Shadow”) spent much of his creative energy and time on other groups. And though the Shangri-Las recorded several songs without him, and more hits came — like “Maybe”, “Out in the Streets”, and “Give Us You’re Blessing” — the music lacked the proto-punk fury that swept through the earlier material. Fortunately, Morton returned to the group in 1966, and with “I can Never Go Home Again”, the kids recovered their beautiful, tragic sound. Driven by guilt-stricken voices, the song, by the way, describes the fatal outcome which follows a daughter’s decision to run away from home with a boy: “Don’t do to your mom what I did to mine / She grew so lonely in the end / Angels picked her for their friend”.
Morton and the Weiss and Ganser sisters followed this top ten hit later that year with “Past, Present and Future”, without a doubt the group’s darkest song. Dave Thompson, in the liner notes for The Best of Shangri-Las, calls it “a shattering record, beautiful and dreadful.” Carved out with strings, piano and breathless vocals, the piece pastes a rhyming soliloquy — about a crushed heart — onto Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. The song features a particularly eerie performance by Mary, the lead vocalist, who explains to her newest beau that he mustn’t “Try to touch me / Don’t try to touch me / ‘Cause that will never happen again”.
This was the last big record for the Shangri-Las, though. Morton left them for good to work (and find success) with bands like the Rascals and Vanilla Fudge. And shortly after his exit, the singers moved to the Mercury label, where their subsequent singles lacked the flash necessary to dent the charts. Then, in 1968, with the realization that the girl-group fad was hopelessly over, they split up.
For two glorious years, however, these teen divas burned a hole where they lay, and their influence on modern rock has been significant. In the ’70s, for instance, punk bands like Blondie and the Ramones drew heavily from the Shangri-Las formula, blending melodramatic scenarios and thudding melodies together. More of the same has come from post-punk outfits like the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Breeders, the Strokes and the Donnas. As Thompson declares in his liner notes, “The Shangri-Las will live forever.”
So far, he seems to be right.